Where Defeat Is Not An Option

The numbers are in, and the news is bad: our public benefits system has gone to rack and ruin. From Social Security to food programs and other pillars of the welfare state, waste, fraud, and abuse is rampant.

Take disability payments. According to an Inspector General’s report obtained by Pajamas Media, the Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance program (OASDI) has provided significant benefits to people who should not have them — including the dead. A newly commissioned audit reveals that more than 2,900 dead people may have received more than $23 million in Social Security disability insurance payments…

Is anyone surprised? Of course not. Now, why do this happen? Because when you pass out free cash, it won’t just be honest people applying for it – and, in fact, it is highly likely that the pool of free cash will bring con artists crawling out of the wood work looking for a piece of the pie. You know this – come on, don’t be shy: you know darned well from your own life experiences that there plenty of people drawing a government check for no good reason.

What is disability supposed to be for? Well, for a person who is rendered temporarily or permanently incapable of working. I’ll bet that not even 10% of those on disability really merit it. The recent story of a man pretending he has to be treated like a baby is just one of the more egregious examples of the disability scam – but most don’t even go to that length. Find a friendly doctor, make up a physical or psychological ailment and eventually the government will disgorge…because the bureaucrats shelling out the money have a vested interest in an ever-increasing number of dependents. To them, it is job security. As long as you are willing to lie, you’ll eventually be on your duff, living off the taxpayer’s dime.

And before any reader who is on disability gets all upset with me – for years I worked with a lady now, sadly, deceased. She was born with a genetic malady which made her incapable of walking (or, indeed, of even sitting in a wheel chair without a seat belt), while her arms and hands were barely functional. She held down a 40 hour a week job until just a few months before her death, and only went on disability when she really could not take the physical strain of going to work. If you don’t have at least my late friend’s level of illness, then you should not be on disability. Period. End of story. Get off your butt and get a job. Stop sucking the life blood out of everyone else. If you need help, you should get it – if you can’t work, you shouldn’t have to…but it isn’t right for people to be getting a free ride.

And until we start acting like adults here – which includes demanding that everyone who can work pull their own weight – this will just go on. Sure, they audited and caught these people but vast shoals of leeches have already made it through the net, costing our nation not just billions in tax dollars, but many more billions in lost productivity. We are allowing the lazy and shiftless to take advantage of a generous society, and it is time we called a halt.